P

ertamina EP announced on Wednesday that it had discovered a potential of 2,546 barrels per day (bpd) of oil and 2.75 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) of gas coming from the Tiung Biru field on the border of Central and East Java.

The company’s president director Syamsu Alam expected the discovery to help the country achieve its production target this year of 950,000 bpd. “We’re happy that the discovery at the field is quite high. I hope it can boost optimism over exploration activities in the country,” he said.

The Tiung Biru field is located 15 kilometers southeast of Cepu in Central Java and 28 kilometers northeast of Bojonegoro in East Java. Tiung Biru is located in the same area as the Jambaran field, which is operated by Mobil Cepu Limited, a subsidiary of US-based ExxonMobil.

To accelerate the production activity at the field, Pertamina EP will use the put on production (POP) scheme for the TBR-1ST well with a production target of 210 bpd of oil, which will be reached in the second quarter of 2012.

The company will also propose the POP scheme for the TBR-2ST well to upstream oil and gas regulator BPMigas. The second well is targeted to produce 1,000 bpd.

In addition to TBR-2ST well, BPMigas has also approved the drilling of the TBR-3 well.

Last year, Pertamina EP failed to achieve its oil output target of 132,000 bpd by producing only 126,000 bpd. According to BPMigas, the company lost around 7,000 bpd due to land-related problems and unplanned shutdowns.

In 2012, the company aims to produce 134,000 bpd. In addition to optimizing production at the current fields, the firm is also committed to boosting production from suspended wells that are scattered within its working areas across the country.

The company has studied around 300 out of 5,144 suspended wells in its areas and expects to produce
100 bpd.

BPMigas operational deputy Rudi Rubiandini had earlier estimated that if Pertamina EP could reactivate around 30 percent of those wells, the company could contribute an additional oil output of 36,000 bpd.

The firm has also announced that it has set a target of producing 15,000 bpd of oil from the Sangasanga and Tarakan fields in East Kalimantan by 2016. Last year, the production was 7,690 bpd and this year, the target is 8,144 bpd.

Pertamina EP plans to acquire 3D seismic data of a total area of 2,700 square kilometers for the development of production fields and to support the implementation of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies.